College Football and Nostalgia
I don't get homesick for my home state of South Carolina all too often.
Don't get me wrong, I miss my family always. I miss my high school friends. I miss our welcoming, green brick house and its big backyard. But, whether it's because it wasn't truly 'home' to me until high school or because I prefer Michigan's beautiful changing of the seasons to Carolina's relentless heat or because I prefer Midwestern lifestyle and worldviews to Southern lifestyle and worldviews; for one reason or another, I don't generally find myself laying awake at night, dreaming of being back in the Palmetto State.
That changes every Labor Day weekend, when college football kicks off.
I was raised with a love for college sports thanks to my father-- who demonstrated to me from an early age that if I were to cheer for any sports teams, it was going to be the Tar Heels first and foremost-- and growing up, spent my Saturdays wheeling out our cable-less TV and watching the primetime games on ABC. (And on a quick tangent, John Saunders, to me, was always The Voice of college football, and I was heartbroken to hear of his passing. He was, by all accounts, a class act and a good friend, and ESPN's college football coverage will be lacking without him.) Moments like the Vince Young run, the Boise State hook-and ladder, and the famous Ohio State-Michigan game are prominent memories from my youth. As far back as I can remember, the start of the college football season has been the most significant signpost for the beginning of Autumn. That works in the inverse too: the onset of Fall subtly marks the beginning of college football.
And perhaps that is the best explanation for my strangely profound emotional attachment to college football (the kind of attachment that last year kept me up until 4 AM in order to watch North Carolina's biggest games from Budapest). After all, Fall itself is a season of nostalgia. The slowly cooling weather, leaves turning to orange and red, the beverages of choice being hot cider and pumpkin-spiced everything, apple-picking...all culminating in the wonderful family holiday/football-laden weekend that is Thanksgiving weekend, with eyes turned towards Christmas. In my mind, this game I love is an inextricable aspect of this wonderful season of the year.
Enter South Carolina. It took me several years after our family's move from Chicagoland to appreciate much about living below the Mason-Dixon line, but one thing that I instantly loved: in South Carolina, college football is king. Our hometown shut down-- with the exception of sports bars-- on Fall Saturdays. Tiger and Gamecock flags emerged all over town. Convoys of cars drove out to fill the massive cathedrals of the sport with cheering (read: rabid) fans. The "big games" all the boys and girls talked about at school the following week were always the college football games. This was a welcome change from my days of schooling in suburban Illinois, wherein I pleaded my friends and peers to care as much about the result of the Rose Bowl as they did about the result of the MLB Playoff games.
Thus, I react with a strange combination of breathless excitement and pained sentimentality to the beginning of this season every year. This time of the year, when the sports world turns its focus to college students from Tuscaloosa and Tallahassee, when the air turns crisp and fresh and invigorating, when students begrudgingly return to school, is also the time of the year where I long to be back in Carolina. I can't watch College Football on ABC any more without yearning to be watching it at home on our big red couch, after a long day of raking leaves with my dad and tossing a football in our yard with my little brother, coming back inside to a Chick-fil-A dinner.
For now, I'll have to settle for Turkey Bowls with the family at Thanksgiving.
Definitely burned my older brother for a TD on this play, in case you were wondering.
It's a different experience to watch college football alone- this specific genre of sport is inherently communal. But little can diminish my love for it, just as little can lessen my love for Autumn in general.
Let the games begin.